


Silhouette Dreams

by 11oyd



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Blind Bucky Barnes, Blow Jobs, Bucky thinks Steve is his handler, Bucky whump, Descriptions of past torture, Dissociation, Dom Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Spanking, Sub Steve Rogers, Suicidal thoughts (briefly), bucky explores his sexuality, dom/sub themes, explicit violence, non cacw compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-04-22 05:36:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14301930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/11oyd/pseuds/11oyd
Summary: Steve sees the heavily raised scars around Bucky’s eyes, and the way Bucky’s eyes see nothing at all, clouded white and sliding from side to side without any purpose to them.The Winter Soldier is blind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me when i reread this in my doc files: Wow this is good someone should finish this
> 
> me: 
> 
> me: 
> 
> me: oh, that's me

The mask comes off in Steve's hand, dropping to the ground, and when the Winter Soldier turns around, Steve's mouth falls open.

He sees the man who died falling, died screaming - he sees the childhood boy who always fought at his side, always slung an arm around his shoulders and called him  _Stevie,_ rubbed his back to help him breathe, wrapped warm arms around him when it was too cold at night.

He sees the heavily raised scars around Bucky's eyes, and the way Bucky's eyes see nothing at all, clouded white and sliding from side to side without any purpose to them.

The Winter Soldier is  _blind_. This whole time, this whole fight,  _Bucky._

"Bucky?" he asks weakly, lost.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" snarls the man, and moves towards him.

* * *

 

They find Bucky again three weeks after he pulls Steve from the water, and his head twitches back and forth between Steve, Sam, and Natasha as they come towards him, his body held as tight as an arrow as he backs into the corner.

"Bucky," Steve pleads. "Please come with us. We're trying to help you. I just -" His voice feels so small. He hangs his shield limply at his side, tired of the fight. He doesn't want to force Bucky to do anything, but the Avengers have all agreed: he must be brought in for his and everyone else's safety. Even Sam had agreed. Steve had complied only if he were the one to bring Bucky in.

But now he's here and he can't do it. The way Bucky's shoulders hunch in, the way his cheeks are so hollowed like he's been living off garbage. His hair is limp and greasy in his face. There's an exhausted, hunted air about him, as though he hasn't rested once since the helicarriers fell.

"I don't know you," rasps Bucky. His voice sounds like it hasn't been used once in the last three weeks, or any time before that.

"It's me," he says. "It's Steve. We were -" He chokes. He can't get the words out, his throat feels so tight. "We were friends."

Bucky turns his face towards Steve, his eyes staring blankly. He used to have such expressive eyes - bright with mischief, narrowed with anger, crinkling at the corners with fondness, growing soft when Steve was sick, fearful when Steve grew sicker - now they're empty.

Then, slowly, he lifts his right hand in the air, reaching out to Steve like he knows exactly where he is.

Steve looks back to Sam and Natasha, hesitating only for a moment. Sam purses his lips; Natasha doesn't move. He looks back to Bucky and then moves forward until Bucky's hand touches his chest. It's positioned right to where his head would have been before the serum, but now - his breath catches as Bucky slides his hand up, firmly pressing against his uniform. He measures out Steve's chest, feels out the roundness of his shoulders, then lets his fingers rest on Steve's neck for a moment. He stays there for a heartbeat, touching Steve's pulse, then goes up to his face.

Steve closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath. Bucky slides his fingers over his nose, his closed eyes, his forehead, his mouth. He presses his thumb against Steve's lower lip hard enough that Steve opens up for him and for a second he wonders if Bucky's going to check his teeth before Bucky quietly says, "Steve was smaller," and then tries to snap his neck.

It's only by a miracle that Steve avoids it; he'd been lulled almost into a trance at the feel of Bucky's hand on him and he barely ducks out of the neck-snapping hold, getting a punch to the face a moment later and then Sam's throwing Bucky onto the ground and Natasha is tying his hands up with super-soldier-strength metal handcuffs.

"Don't hurt him," says Steve, still trying to catch his breath. "He didn't mean to."

Bucky spits and snarls like a wild animal, thrashing about like he might still be able to defeat all three of them with his weakened state and his hands handcuffed behind his back. His eyes are wide open, unblinking and ferocious, rolling in his head.

"We have to take him in, Steve," says Natasha.

Steve closes his eyes again. He's just as blind as Bucky is.

"I know," he says. "I know."

* * *

 

They keep the Asset in a decently sized room with a soft bed, a private bathroom, and books written in braille. There's  _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ and  _Gone with the Wind_ and  _The Invisible Man_. They come in to speak to him, especially the man who calls himself Steve and a soft-spoken woman who calls herself his therapist. They come at separate times. They like to ask him questions.

"Are you comfortable here?" Dr. Gonzalez asks him. "Is there something you want that you don't have?"

"When did they blind you?" Rogers asks.

"Do you have dreams at night?" Dr. Gonzalez asks.

"Why didn't the serum heal it?" Rogers asks.

"Do you want to self-harm or injure anyone around you?" Dr. Gonzalez asks.

"Do you remember me?" Rogers asks.

He always asks that, and if he doesn't, the Asset can tell that he wants to, can almost hear it perched on the back of his tongue.  _It's me, it's Steve. We grew up together. It's Steve. Do you remember?_

There's something about his voice - something that reminds the Asset of injustice and sorrow, anger and grief so deep that it threatens to overwhelm him. It doesn't make sense. Of the fractured memories he has, very few and so fragile that pulling them up threatens to break them, he only remembers a small Steve, with bird bones and huge eyes. Nothing like the powerful man that fought him and held his ground.

"I think I understand it," says Rogers quietly one day. He sits in a little wooden chair a few feet away from the Asset, careful to never get too close. "Bruce says it was a chemical burn, too deep for the serum to repair. He says your other senses probably got boosted instead, and that's how you can still fight. Is that it? You can do everything else better now?"

The Asset doesn't respond, like he hasn't responded to any of the questions posed to him before now. He stands against the wall in the back of the room, farthest from the door, hands to his sides. There's a small part of him that regrets attacking this Steve, this Rogers - but every time he hears that voice, he gets the same helpless rage, tidal wave of despair. He hates the way this voice makes him feel, but he's decided not to hurt anyone anymore. He is own handler now. He must keep himself leashed.

"You can, can't you? So, so just," Rogers stands, taking a step towards him, and the Asset flinches away. Rogers stops. His voice comes out even more quietly, pulled out of him. "Smell me."

This, out of all things, makes the Asset lift his head. His eyebrows draw together just barely, a minute reaction that he knows Rogers sees. He can feel Rogers' eyes on him every second that they're together, boring into him like a physical weight. He thinks if Rogers could, he would peel the Asset open so he could look at every part of him, every bone and muscle, examining him all over. He doesn't know what Rogers is searching for.

"Smells don't change, do they? Even if I look different, I should still smell like who you remember. So," it sounds like Rogers is lifting his chin, his voice taking on a defiant edge. "Smell me, Buck."

For a second the Asset does nothing, and then he turns his head to the side and inhales. The smell hits him hard, like a punch to the stomach, and his useless eyes blink rapidly before he stills again.

"Doesn't smell like anything," he says.

Rogers starts towards him again and then seems to restrain himself. The Asset knows his hands are clenched. He wonders if Rogers is about to hit him. "You're lying."

The man smells like something both known and unknown - something clean, something strong, sweat layered under musk. He thinks Rogers must have withheld from showering for a few days to get it to smell like this. Maybe he went to the gym right before this. It makes the Asset's mouth water, and he has to swallow.

"What do you want from me?" he finally says.

"I just want," says Rogers, sounding frustrated. "I want - it's  _me_ , it's your - I'm not trying to hurt you. I don't want to force you to do anything."

The Asset reaches out behind him and lays a hand on the back wall, on his cage.

"That's different," insists Steve. "We're just keeping you here to protect you."

"To protect others."

"You tried to snap my neck coming here."

The Asset turns away and puts his back to Rogers. He doesn't like the smell. He doesn't like the voice. He doesn't like any of it.

"If I could shrink down again, I would," says Rogers. "I'd be defenseless for you. You'd see that I haven't changed, not really. I'm still me under this - under what they made me. I'm still your best friend, Bucky, I'm still yours."

He stays in the room with the Asset for another ten minutes, both of them waiting in silence before Rogers finally turns and leaves, taking his damned smell with him. The scent lingers afterward for hours until the Asset wants to claw his own nose off, burn it out with bleach, forget that it ever existed at all.

* * *

 

Steve gets an idea. He goes to the craft store with Natasha trailing behind him.

"He can shoot," she says, her fingers trailing over the wood he's choosing from. "How do you think they got him to do that? He hits the target every time."

"I don't know," he says. "It doesn't make any sense." Steve's hearing is excellent - he can hear a woman on the phone right now three aisles over, can hear the person on the other end as well, can hear that there's a cat next to the person on the other end of the phone meowing for attention. Sometimes he hears so much his head throbs with it; if Bucky's new hearing is even more improved than this, he must be able to hear for a mile long. "Maybe he can hear their heartbeat."

Bucky could hear pretty well before anyway. He'd hear Steve coughing as he came up the stairs to their apartment and burst in, his expression ablaze.  _Have you been breathing in dust?_ he'd demand.  _Where's your hot tea? Go lie down._

"I never knew he was blind when he taught us in the Red Room," says Natasha. "He's always kept a mask on."

Steve stills. He carefully doesn't look over, tries to keep his voice neutral. Natasha's told him some about their time together and he doesn't resent it, but it makes his stomach tense in an odd way. "What about later? You two were… intimate together."

"We stayed in the dark."

He can't imagine sleeping with someone and not knowing they were blind. How could she not tell? Did her hands never stray to his face to find the raised scars there? "He used to love sitting and watching things. Just on the balcony, smoking, people watching. Or staring at animals, squirrels, birds. He'd rest his chin on his hands and stare, not moving for hours. And going to the pictures -" His voice cracks.

Natasha hands him a tiny paintbrush, questioning. It's small enough to get the details right. He nods. She says, "He's not the same person anymore, Steve. You can't ask him to be."

"I know he's not."

He used to love staring at Steve too. Steve sprawled naked on the bed, eyes heavy lidded as he looked up at Bucky and Bucky looked back. His eyes would trail over Steve, from the top of his corn straw hair to his skinny ribs to his hard cock jutting up.  _Are you just gonna look or are you gonna do something about it?_ Bucky's smile would be slow and sure.  _Don't rush me, Rogers._ Just that staring was enough to get a blot of pre-come covering the tip of his cock, heat spreading from his stomach to his head. That gaze, dark blue, blown pupils, made Steve feel like the only thing worth looking at, made him feel like a precious piece of art hung up on a wall. It made him feel like Bucky would want him forever and always, just like this, even as small and skinny as he was.

A vicious part of Steve is glad that Bucky never got to see Natasha naked, that that image was never seared in his brain. Then he feels bad. He reaches back and squeezes her hand to make up for it.

"Tony told me about his idea," she says.

Steve sighs and turns to face her, dropping her hand. "He doesn't know discretion."

Her expression is thoughtful, calculating. "You think he can do it? Create new eyes for him? I've never heard of that before."

"Tony thinks he can turn a camera lens into neural signals to the brain. Tony thinks he can do whatever he wants."

"He'll be half cyborg by the time this is over."

Steve's smile is slanting. "I don't even know if it's possible. It probably isn't."

"Steve," she says as he picks up a tiny wooden block, measuring it with his fingers. "What the  _hell_ are you making?"

"You'll see soon," he says, and hopes Bucky will too.

* * *

 

The Asset reads all of  _Pride and Prejudice,_ he reads all seven  _Harry Potter_ books, he starts to read  _100 Years of Solitude_ and then has to stop. They bring in a CD player and give him a selection of CDs with braille titles: Dean Martin, Dixie Chicks, Mac Miller. He likes the rap music, loud. He asks for more. After the hunger pains disappear, he starts working out, a hundred push-ups, two hundred sit-ups. Sometimes when the room feels too big, he lays on the floor under the bed with his eyes closed, his hands folded on top of his stomach. It makes him feel small and safe.

Rogers comes in when he's like this one day, and from the sound of his feet against the floor, the Asset can tell that Rogers is nervous. He doesn't know how he knows this, except perhaps that all human beings are nervous the same way: fidgeting, restless, twitching. That's probably how he knows.

"What are you doing?" Rogers ask. When the Asset doesn't say anything, he shifts his weight back and forth. "I brought you something."

Maybe another book. The Asset lays his metal hand out from under the bed, palm up.

"You'll have to come out to hold it."

He pulls his arm back in and waits to see if Rogers will leave. It's been almost a month of these visits, of the same meals and the same room, but instead of making him feel trapped, it makes him feel stable. He knows everything that will happen to him, no question. The part of him that's always expecting pain has shrunk just a little, and he makes Rogers wait because he knows Rogers won't leave. Rogers is so predictable. Even though he is not the right Steve, he is still so familiar. Everything he does feels like it's already happened once before.

He crawls out just enough that he can sit upright, cross-legged, resting his back against the bed. "What is it?" he asks, his voice rusty. It's been almost a full week since he last spoke. He knows Steve is shocked by it, feels him jerk back. The air around him is displaced and then settles back, like a lake going calm.

"Hold out your hands," says Rogers, sitting down across from him.

The Asset takes his time again before obeying. No one seems to really care if he follows orders around here, only that he doesn't hurt anyone. He thinks Rogers wouldn't even care if he hurt someone, as long as that someone was Rogers - Rogers sometimes seems aching to be hurt, like he would take any kind of pain from the Asset, anything at all.

When both his palms are out, Rogers leans in and carefully places something wooden and light in his hands.

He lets it just sit there for a moment to see if Rogers will explain - and then when he doesn't, he shifts his grip to only his metal hand and uses his flesh hand to touch the sides. The top is open, the outsides of the box grainy wood. A rectangle. The inside walls have soft paper. There's metal. His breath catches suddenly and he sets it down on the floor in between him and Rogers.

"It's our apartment," says Rogers, like he needs the explanation. "From before. I made a miniature of it."

"Why," says the Asset, flat.

"I thought it might help…" The wood scraps against the tile floor as Rogers pushes it barely closer. "See, here's our kitchen sink, our toilet. The bed." He's detailing it out like the Asset might be able to see what he's talking about. Then Rogers says, "Touch it, please. I made it so you could run your fingers over it like - like you did my face."

His fingers twitch like he might reach out and touch Rogers' face again. Smooth skin, ready mouth. Rogers' lips had reacted so strongly to his touch, like they were just waiting for him push in and in. Like his sense of smell, his sense of touch had only amplified with the loss of his vision. He can feel the fibers of each piece of cloth. He could feel the blood under Rogers' skin, rising to the surface. He could feel every time something sliced into his skin, split him open. Every bruise. It always feels like too much.

He brushes his fingers over the edge of the miniature and hears the way Rogers' heartbeat kicks into high gear. Everything in Rogers' body always reacts to the Asset just like this - like they're about to fight, or fuck. It makes him pause and cock his head.

Then he reaches in and runs his finger over the scratchy wool covering over the miniature bed. He touches the tiny sink, the fridge, wonders if Rogers filled it with tiny food inside. Rotting bananas, cold bread, glass bottles of milk. He drags his fingers over the couch where the stuffing is spilling out of the crevices and there's a spot on the cushion that feels like it's been burned off by a cigarette. Where did he get these things? He almost expects to touch a miniature version of himself sitting at the table or outside on the balcony, but there's only furniture in here. He can hear Rogers' heartbeat quickening again and abruptly pulls his hand away, as though Rogers is watching him do something unbearably intimate.

"I don't want this," he says.

"That's okay, Buck -"

"No," says the Asset, standing. "No, I don't want this. Take it away."

"I could just leave it here," says Rogers, also standing. He's picked up the model with him, perhaps so that they won't step on it. So the Asset won't step on it. "You could look at it later, privately."

"I won't."

"Buck," says Rogers. He sounds desperate. "It's fine, whatever you feel about it, it's fine -"

" _NO,_ " says the Asset, and rips the model out of Rogers' hands. He hurls it against the wall with his metal hand and hears it shatter as it collides, splintering into a hundred pieces. Immediately, he thinks,  _That's it, he's done, Rogers is finally going to leave,_ and a panicky, fearful thing claws up his throat. His breathing is fast and shallow, his head swimming, and now the room feels far too small for the first time since he arrived. He stumbles, hand reaching out, and comes in contact with Rogers' shoulder. It's the first time he's touched him since that first meeting, his hand on Rogers' face. He hates how wide this shoulder is.

"Bucky, Buck, it's okay," says Rogers quickly, catching his elbow and coming close to him. "I don't care if you destroy it, it's  _yours_ , I made it for you. You can do whatever you like with it."

The Asset closes his eyes, gritting his teeth hard, trying not to grip onto Rogers harder. He is not Bucky Barnes. He is not whole or healed; he's barely even human. He can only manage to exist in a 15x15 room where he's not allowed to leave - the Barnes he remembers in glimpses and flashes is charismatic and handsome, smiling and laughing with his head thrown back. That Barnes took charge, he protected, he served, he saved, he noticed as soon as Steve fell sick and he did everything in his power to bring him back to health. If the Asset had little Steve now, he would most likely succumb to pneumonia.

"I'm - not - him," he says, spitting it out. He pulls back. Turns his head away. "If you come here every day trying to resurrect him, if you think you can be God, if you - if you -"

"I'm here for you," says Rogers.

The Asset says, "Just go.  _Just go._ "

Rogers hesitates only a moment and then he goes.

There's something in him like an animal. He rips at his hair, jerking at it until his teeth clench, and when that's not enough he knocks over his bookcase, spilling the books everywhere. A noise of crazed pain leaves his lips and he attacks the CD collection next: He throws open all the cases, he snaps the fragile discs in half. The sound settles in his chest, the cracking of each of his favorite songs. He holds one jagged piece in his metal hand and holds it to his flesh wrist, just holds it there. If anyone's watching him, they'll come in now. They'll stop him now, maybe tie him to the bed to keep him from doing any more damage. Don't hurt the merchandise. That's ours. We paid for this.

But no one comes.

His hand shakes and shakes, bringing a little line of blood up on his forearm. He doesn't know why this is happening, why now. Why after a month in here, it's only after running his fingers along that goddamn tiny bedroom that he wants to tear himself apart.

The CD fragment clatters to the ground.

The Asset stands with his arms limp at his sides, letting the trickle of blood work its way down to his hand, and then gets down to the floor and crawls back under the bed. Under there, he finds a teeny tiny lamp, the paper lampshade so fragile, and he holds it in his human hand. His thumb strokes over the thin paper, up and down. In another world, he might have left this lamp on and Steve would have yelled at him because of the light bill, always running to turn it off behind him.  _We're not made of money, Bucky! We need this for food!_ He loved when Steve got angry, when he puffed up like a little alley cat. It made Steve even more mad when he laughed.  _I got plenty of money for you, Stevie. I've been hiding it all these years, but I'm actually filthy fucking rich. What d'ya want? A boat? A mansion?_ Steve always said the same thing:  _For you to turn the god damn light off._

He turns his face to the floor and tries not to cry. James Barnes wouldn't.

* * *

 

Steve comes back the next day and the debris is picked up, cleared away. He doesn't know if Bucky did it or someone else, but he doesn't ask. Instead, he sets a new model on the desk. Bucky hasn't moved from his spot on the bed, his eyes staring blankly. Each time Steve sees that blank stare, he feels a new jolt to his system; he thought he would get used to it eventually, but it feels new every day.

"I made another," he says. "But it's different than last time. Do you want to touch it?"

"I'll break it again," rasps Bucky, his head not shifting. This new speaking - it thrills Steve. Even when the miniature of their apartment was being dashed against the wall, that  _NO_ felt like barriers being broken. He loved it.

"Go ahead," says Steve and smiles. "But I'd appreciate if you'd examine it at least a little bit first. I stayed up half the night making it."

"Waste of time."

He shrugs. "I don't sleep much."

"How much?"

"I really only need four hours to function. I can sleep longer if I really try, but most nights…" It's their first real conversation since Bucky was admitted here. It's like lightning bolt to his spine, every word out of Bucky's mouth. "Do you sleep much?"

Bucky's mouth flattens out at the question, and Steve winces. No direct questions about himself then. Check.

"I sleep enough," says Bucky.

Steve picks the model back up, holding it towards Bucky. "Do you want…?" He can't help the hopeful lilt in his voice.

At first Bucky doesn't move, then his hand twitches - and then both hands turn over, palm up on his lap. Steve walks to him, places the model down gently, and steps back again. As soon as he's away, he sees some of the tension drain out of Bucky's shoulders. He takes his time touching the outside of the model just as he did the day before, running his fingers over it like he's expecting a secret message to be on the outside of the box. When he seems satisfied that it's just simple wood, he moves to the inside, dragging his fingers over the contents.

A desk, a chair, a private bathroom, a bookshelf - tiny books that had taken Steve moments of deep concentration to fold together - a CD player. Some of it handmade, some of specially ordered off a site JARVIS directed him to for items as small as these. A narrow bed, backed against the wall, and on the bed: A small man with a metal arm, holding a box.

Bucky  _laughs_.

It's an honest to God laugh. A bark, almost, just one sharp noise, but it's a laugh, and then after, a  _smile_. Steve can't help the way his eyes widen in delight, an enormous smile growing on his own face to match Bucky's. He feels like he did just after getting his new body - shock and wonder and awe, like a miracle is in his midst.

"It's me," says Bucky. "It's me touching another me in a tiny box."

"I didn't know if you'd like that," says Steve honestly. "It was just a guess."

Bucky hums, running his fingers again through the box over the objects mirroring the room they're in. That hum, glorious and low, sends Steve rocking back to the past. He heard Bucky humming low as they fell asleep together, Steve's back pressed to Bucky's front, he heard Bucky humming as he washed the dishes, he heard the way his humming sometimes climbed into singing when one of his favorite records was on. Steve blinks hard, his eyes suddenly wet.

"I… will not destroy this one," says Bucky after a long moment, then sets it down on the bed beside him. He angles his face towards Steve. His eyes shine milky, cloudy. "I thought you'd put miniatures of us in the old one."

Steve's smile falters slightly. "No. I couldn't. We're not there any more."

After a moment, Bucky nods. Then he says, "You can make me another."

"Oh, I can?"

Another smile quirks on Bucky's lips, there and then gone. "Of your apartment now."

"Any more requests?"

Bucky tilts his head and opens his mouth. He wets his lips. "More CDs."

It takes Steve longer to do his current apartment than to do their old one or Bucky's holding cell - he realizes how little time he actually spends in it, how little he knows about it. It's easier to just spend time at the Avengers Tower where Bucky is kept, either with Bucky or his teammates in one of the many lounges above. Or working out alone in the gym on the 33rd floor. Or running through the park outside. His apartment feels too empty, too large; he wanders around mapping out all the furniture and finds pieces that he's never actually sat on before. Wasted space. He could have a room smaller than Bucky's now and be fine.

He puts in all the fake plants, positions the tiny picture frames just perfectly on his bedside table of Peggy and Bucky from before the war. He puts a version of himself sitting upright on the couch facing a black TV screen and stares too hard at the expression on mini-Steve's face. He's glad Bucky won't be able to see that part.

Giving it to Bucky the next day, he hesitates longer than he did with the first two. Bucky sits on the bed again with his hands out, waiting, and Steve steels himself after he places it in Bucky's hands.

Bucky does the same thing he did as the first two times. He touches it all with his flesh hand, taking his time, and Steve waits for his judgment, for him to realize what everyone else already has - that Steve hasn't made any effort at all in being a real human. Natasha accused him once of living out of a suitcase, like he might be whisked away to another time at any moment.

But Bucky doesn't say anything about the lack of personality present. Maybe he can't tell from such a small model. He lets his hand rest on the tiny couch where tiny Steve sits. Then he stands, taking the model with him and putting it next to the other one on the desk. He reaches into the one of his room, picks up small Bucky, and puts him directly next to small Steve in his small apartment.

"Oh," says Steve.

Bucky turns to face him, still silent.

"Do you - do you want to visit me?" he asks, trying to clamp down on the bright fluttering thing in his chest. "Or maybe, maybe -"

"I won't hurt anyone," says Bucky.

"I know," says Steve. Tentatively, "Do you… believe it's me now?"

Bucky blinks his white eyes at him. "No. He was different. But I believe you are enough."

Which in the end is all that Steve can really hope for.

He'll be enough to bring color back into the Winter Soldier's life. He'll make a thousand models if he has to -- a million miniatures. He'll carve the world in a way that Bucky can run his fingers over as many times as he likes. As long as he's allowed to try, that's all he can ask for, and Bucky, beautiful Bucky, turns his blank eyes away with a small shy smile that only Steve can see. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "but how many more chapters are you writing?" you ask
> 
> you fool. you absolute fool. as if any of this is planned at all
> 
> (mind the tags)

He tries to start thinking of himself as Barnes. He can't be Bucky - not yet - but he can't be the Asset either. He leaves the Asset behind in the small room, leaves him under the bed with the lamp still in his hand. Barnes is the one who gets to go with Steve to his apartment.

He starts thinking of him as Steve as well. Rogers… doesn't fit. It's too harsh for someone like this. This person who is not small Steve but who is not  _not_ small Steve. They're all just someone in between.

"Here's your bedroom," says Steve, hovering behind Barnes. "Here - ah, sorry -" He edges around Barnes, trying hard not to touch him. He appreciates that, the way Steve tries never to touch him. Sometimes he can tell Steve is just about to do it, half a breadth away before he catches himself, stopping at the last moment. He always catches himself. Sometimes Barnes wonders what would happen if he didn't. "It's not very personal right now, but maybe you can decorate it…"

"With what?" asks Barnes as he walks inside. There's a thick rug under his feet, and he reaches his hand out, walking until he touches the bed. It sinks down under his fingers. Soft.

"Maybe some…" Steve trails off and then says sheepishly, "My first instinct was to say pictures. That'd be dumb."

He turns his face to Steve. It doesn't do anything for Barnes, but he can tell Steve likes when he does it. He doesn't know how he can tell. "What color are the walls?"

"They're beige."

"What color is your room?"

"Beige."

Barnes lifts his hand off the bed. "Let me see."

Steve takes him down the hall and then to the right. He can tell this room is just a little bit bigger than the one they just came from; he walks around it, comparing it to the model Steve built for him. The wall is smooth. He touches the pillow in the middle of the bed, feels the light decompression at the center. Where Steve sleeps. He's already memorized the amount of steps it takes to get to each place in the apartment - from here to his bed is nineteen steps, from his bed to the front door is twenty, from the kitchen to the balcony is eight. From himself to Steve is four. He doesn't remember much about their old apartment together, but he knows it wasn't like this. He also knows this is legions better than being with Hydra.

"I want you to know this is your apartment now too," says Steve. His voice is earnest, he comes closer. Three steps away now. "You can go anywhere you want, touch anything. We're sharing it."

"Okay," says Barnes.

"Are you hungry?"

The room smells overwhelmingly of Steve. It makes him ache inside. "You haven't found anyone else to live with you here?"

"What?" asks Steve.

"There is no one here you're interested in?"

He hears the way Steve shifts, clearly caught off-guard by this line of questions. "I - no. I preferred to live alone."

Barnes waits. When nothing more comes, he says, "Until me?"

"Yes," says Steve. "Until you came back, Buck."

"Okay," says Barnes. "I'm hungry."

He walks without hesitation back the way they came, following the map in his head. From Steve's eyes to the tiny model to Barnes's fingers to right now. He trusts the miniature and his memory of it. He knows they're passing a coffee table, a couch, a TV set, a bookcase. He leads Steve back to the kitchen.

"You know it already," says Steve, impressed. "Here, take a seat - spaghetti okay?"

"It's fine. No meat though." Barnes sits. Being out of his old holding room is jarring; his senses are all on high alert. Before, it was one room, one set of noises that he could generally control. Here it's chaos. He can hear all the sounds of the street below, he can hear three showers running somewhere in the building. He can hear Steve's calm heartbeat, thudding away in his chest. As soon as the cabinets open, he smells boxed pasta, jarred marinara sauce, and not much else.

"Jesus, Steve," he says, and hears something fall over as Steve's hands shake. "What do you live off of?"

Steve inhales deeply, fixing whatever he knocked over. "I, ah, I'm not here a lot. I'll have to start bringing in more food for us, since I'm assuming you eat as much as I do."

Barnes slides one finger along the edge of the table, feeling the grains of wood. Expensively made. Oak. Polished. Nothing like the table they grew up with, he assumes. His tattered memory doesn't cover that part. "What do your friends think of this? Me being here?"

"They're not important," says Steve, too quickly.

"They think you're in danger?"

"They know I can handle myself."

The shield must be in here somewhere. Guns, too. His fingers twitch, wanting to scope out all the secret places Steve didn't tell him about. He wants to search for bugs and spies. Instead, he drops his hand back into his lap.

"It would be wise for you to heed their caution," he says at last. "They're your friends for a reason."

"You're my friend too," says Steve. His voice is quiet.

Barnes wants to say  _Why? What makes us friends?_ but he doesn't.

"Do you want to know the last thing I remember seeing?" he asks instead. His therapist had asked him this just last week. He'd never thought about it before that. He can hear Steve's hands digging into the counter.

"If you want to tell me," he says.

"I killed one of their scientists. An important one, if the Russians screaming meant anything. The acid was a punishment but not for that crime, a different one. I killed her with my bare hands, and then they hauled me down and poured it searing into my skull. And you might wish your last sight to be something beautiful - the face of the woman you love or the sight of the goddamn sky - but you know what?" His mouth spreads in a slow, feral grin, and a piece of granite cracks under the strain of Steve's hands. "I'm glad it was the last thing I saw. I'm glad it was their suffering that my eyes saw last. The brightest color I've ever seen is that woman's blood. I soaked my hands in it and they were still slippery when the acid started burning."

He stands, walking towards Steve until the other man is pressed up against the counter with nowhere else to go. His flesh hand reaches up like he's about to touch Steve's face, feel his expression, but he only leaves it hovering there an inch from his flushed skin. He can feel the heat rising. His fingertips curl in, and the space between their skin stretches like miles. "You know what I think, Steve?"

It takes Steve a long moment to compose himself, and when he speaks it comes out slightly strangled. "What, Buck?"

He lowers his hand and shakes his head. "I think your friends are right."

* * *

 

Hydra comes for him a week later.

Barnes snaps awake, jerking up off the floor where he sleeps. He can hear them, five of them, prowling through the living room. He doesn't have any weapons, Steve hasn't given him any yet. It doesn't matter. He's not letting them leave here alive.

He hears them laughing to one another.  _Laughing._ Speaking in Russian, a man and a woman. "He's here, our pet is sleeping," the man says.

"So comfortable and lazy," says the woman, laughing again. Not bothering to keep quiet. Barnes steps out into the hallway, feeling himself blend in with the dark, and hears Steve move just a few feet away. It's only been seven days of living with him, but already he thinks he might know Steve's movements anywhere, picked out among a crowd of people. Even a crowd of 6'2" men, weighing 220 pounds, who threw themselves in the face of every danger. Steve moved like a man who used to be small. Everything from his feet movement to the way his arms swung; Bucky heard it all, he recorded it all, he kept the information safe and tucked away. There isn't a chance of him mistaking those footsteps for someone else.

He reaches his hand out towards Steve and easily catches the gun Steve tosses him. He wishes he felt angry or surprised that this was happening, but instead his fears feel justified, and another part of him grows confident. They would only send people after him if they wanted him back. And they would only want him back if he was worth something. A cutthroat fighter, a spy that could infiltrate any organization. A disease. No, more than a disease. A plague. His metal arm recalibrates, rippling silver sliding into place.

Steve passes in front of him, holding the shield to protect them both. They crouch low to the ground, moving toward the voices in total sync.

"He walks toward us," says the woman, and Barnes knows what's about to happen only a second before she calls out, still in Russian, " _Come for your handler, Asset,_ " and it's too late.

And Barnes is gone. In his place is metal. In his stead, a machine. He straightens up from behind the shield, his gun held limply at his side. Beside him, Steve whispers, "Bucky?" and the Asset turns slow blind eyes on the man next to him. He raises the gun again and hears the laughter. It rings in his head.

"That's right, Asset," says the man. "Your handler wants you back. He's missed you."

 _Handler_ , thinks the Asset. He knows what a handler is. He knows how to obey one. It's written inside of him like code, a programming so deep it runs in his veins. He knows a handler is the one he fears disappointing the most, the one who provides for him. The one who gives him mission orders and punishments and rewards. The one who calls him by name.

He is being called. He will return. He's a good Asset, the best.

"Bucky," whispers Captain Rogers again, horrified.

He lifts the gun over the shield and shoots.

The bullet slices through the Hydra agent's eye, bursting out the back of his skull in a spray of blood. The woman chokes, and then harshly spits a series of orders for the other three men in the room. " _Asset,_ " she commands.

He hurtles towards her - ducks and rolls when he hears the sound of gunfire and then comes up on top of her, tackling her to the ground. His gun presses into her throat. In Russian, he says, "You are not the handler," and then shoots her through the neck. He takes a knife from her thigh, twisting it upright in his hand, and then leaps to another of the men like an animal, his teeth bared. This is why they make him wear the muzzle: His teeth rip into the man's throat just as his knife sinks deep in his chest. They don't like to see the red in his smile afterward. They don't like to hear the pleased grunts he makes after a kill.

Cap's killed another in the meantime.

One left.

The Asset can hear the agent on his left. On the side of the arm. Bad for him. He doesn't even use the knife for this - just pushes him into a wall, weak little agent, and starts digging his metal fingers straight into his stomach. The metal can withstand anything. Can go through anything. It's his greatest weapon. The Asset is a weapon. The whirring sound echoes in his ears as the arm churns through skin and stomach lining.

"Soldat," gasps the agent, writhing against the wall. His Russian isn't nearly as good. A hired hand from somewhere else. Mercenaries always fail because money always runs out. "Longing -  _rusted_  -"

The Asset decides it's taking too long. He backs away, takes the man by the head, and breaks his neck in one simple, clean move. Carelessly, he throws him to the ground like discarded trash, then turns towards his handler.

Cap breathes hard. "Bucky?" he asks. "Are you okay?"

"No injuries," he says. "Functional. Dispose of the bodies?"

Cap is still inhaling and exhaling too quickly - in, out. In. The Asset approaches him, instinctively reaching to place a hand on his chest. Protect the handler. At all costs. Something in his mind whispers of weak lungs, pneumonia, thin body. Same handler?

"No - no, we can - call in someone from SHIELD," Cap says. "Bucky, what are you -?"

The man's voice digs inside of the Asset, burying itself deep in his stomach. Worry in his voice. This is worse than any of his other handlers. "Tell me what to do."

"You don't have to do anything," says the handler, and instantly the Asset steps back, his head falling forward so that his hair swings in his face. Displeased. He's displeased the Captain; he's useless. His hands clench into fists. A tremor wracks him once, an aftereffect of the adrenaline, and then he's still. He will wait until the next command comes, even if it's not until the next day. The next week. This body has proven it can go long periods of time without food, water, sleep, sustenance. He can wait. "Bucky?"

He is supposed to be  _useful._ If he's not, they put him back in the cold. In the chill. They frost him over until he's learned his lesson. He thought after the acid went in his eyes, he thought maybe they'd just put him away forever, and part of him was relieved. Let the icicles coat his hair and his skin turn blue blue blue, he wouldn't be awake to know. Let frozen tendrils weave into his brain until he could never be defrosted again. What sort of asset is useful blind, he'd wondered. And then he'd found out - he'd found out how to be useful again. They'd tortured it right into him. The Asset is shivering and he grits his teeth to stop it.

First came teaching him how to hunt with his senses. They trained his nose first. Starved him out for days and days until he could smell the faintest whiff of bread baking from two buildings away. It smelled like a person he couldn't remember and a room he couldn't recall. The hunger gnawed a hole through him; he kept waiting to grow immune, but it only grew stronger. His mind was hazy, but they pumped him full of drugs to keep him awake and alert - and hungry.

He smelled the raw meat. Steak. Less than rare. It had never known fire. Saliva pooled in his mouth. They held it in front of him, taunting him with it, strapped to the wall with chains as he was. He would lean out as far as he could, the veins in his neck taut, his mouth open. His eyes unseeing but his nostrils flaring.

The first time it touched his mouth, he groaned. They only fed him enough to sate the rabid desire thumping through him, and then the process started again.

After week three of only a few handfuls of raw meat, he began to smell the blood inside of people.

He smelled when it quickened, when pulses leapt. He smelled the sweat pouring off his victims as they begged. It taught him how to locate people by scent alone, even deafened he could swivel his head around and pinpoint exactly where someone was standing. More things were admitted by scent then most people were aware of.

The second sense was hearing.

This one was more complex. He begun to think they were entertained by teaching him. A science experiment with no strings attached. 

They took him to a room.

They took him to a room.

The Asset's mind went blank.

He will be good for this handler. He won't have to be put to sleep. He knows how to use his senses now. To protect. To fight. For this handler, he will. He will be good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the more comments i get, the more likely it is that bucky will one day have a seeing eye dog


	3. Chapter 3

Steve presses his hand over his eyes and allows himself five seconds to fully freak out. Bucky had been getting better. He'd been smiling hesitantly at some things. He hadn't left the apartment so far, but he'd started eating food from the fridge without waiting for Steve to be present first, and that had felt like such a success. Steve had stared at the empty yogurt cup in the trash yesterday for a good minute and a half, feeling peaceful for the first time in months.

And now all of that is gone, like it never existed in the first place. Bucky's standing like a decommissioned robot, powered down for the night until Steve's voice brings him back to life. Steve's  _commands._ Carefully, Steve monitors his own breathing even as he keeps pressing his palm down to his eyes. It was the hike in his breathing that brought Bucky closer, that hand against his chest that set Steve's heart fluttering fast; he hated how much he'd loved that touch. He can't do that again, not when Bucky is out of his mind. It feels like assault.

It's been more than five seconds. He brings his hand down and looks at the man across from him. Bucky's covered in blood, his metal hand shining with it, his clothes dripping in it. His chin is stained. Now that Steve's focusing he can smell the blood all around them from the five agents they killed. Right.

"Bucky," he says, and watches as Bucky's head snaps up. His gut twists sickeningly at the show of complete obeisance. He doesn't know what the agents said to cause this, but it doesn't matter right now - except that this change might be permanent. And if it's not, then it might happen again at any moment as soon as Hydra comes for him again. The only thing he can be thankful for is that somehow he's the one in charge of Bucky and not the agents; he imagines what would have happened if Bucky had fought for them instead and the sick feeling deepens. He has to stop this barrage of thoughts. "I'd like for you to go get clean. Can you do that?"

Face blank, Bucky immediately begins stripping, starting with his t-shirt.

"Wait!" says Steve and then cringes as Bucky freezes again. He has to stop lashing out like that -  _Calm, Rogers. Be fucking calm._ "Uh, you can undress in the bathroom. Do you think you can take a shower by yourself?"

Just a tiny flicker of emotion crosses Bucky's face - irritation? He thinks of how he used to react when Bucky would baby him, the way he'd snap at Bucky,  _I can take care of myself._ He wishes he'd known then what he knows now. "I can shower, sir," he says.

"Good," says Steve with relief. "Then, uh, go ahead. And after - go to my room and shut the door. I'm going to deal with SHIELD and these… bodies, and then I'll come get you after." He doesn't know what else to add, what other clarifications and specifications he's forgetting that'll stunt Bucky's progress. Does he have to tell him to use shampoo? Put his clothes back on when he gets to Steve's room? Are these things implied? He adds, "You can lay down and sleep in my bed if you want," and this, of all things, breaks Bucky's blank expression.

It's fear, real fear, that make the white eyes go wide and his mouth fall open. "Please," says Bucky, his voice desperate. Steve's never heard it like this before. "Please don't make me go to sleep. I - I can help. I can help with anything you want. Please," he stumbles towards Steve and Steve holds up a hand instinctively.

"Okay," he says, trying his best to sound soothing. "I know you can. But what will help me most is you getting clean right now."

Bucky stands there a moment longer, and then when Steve does nothing, he says in a small voice, "Did… did I do well for you? Sir?"

Steve looks back at the bodies, scattered throughout the room. One of them has his throat ripped to shreds. The others are equally covered in the display of Bucky's violence. All of that was for Steve. A show of protection like a guard dog attacking his enemies. He looks back at Bucky. He could say anything. He could tell Bucky to desecrate their corpses even further, to prove his loyalty to Steve. The strangest thing is that he probably had as much power over Bucky back before everything happened and didn't even know it. All the times he mentioned he liked a particular food or clothing piece offhandedly and then it appeared in the apartment within the month - all the times a guy messed with Steve in words or actions and then later was found with a bloody lip and a scowl on his face. That was Steve handling Bucky, in his own way, without realizing.

He might have realized it one time, right before Bucky was properly drafted away. They had just stumbled into bed after a night of dancing and girls and Bucky was kissing his neck with fierce intention, heedless of leaving a mark. Reckless. Bucky could always explain his marks away with only a mischievous grin and a random bird's name - Steve's drew questioning eyes and a skeptical frown that he always resented.

"Bucky," Steve had said sharply, his hand going to Bucky's dark hair. His fingers went right to the root, gripping and pulling Bucky's head a few inches off his skin. Bucky, half-lidded, woozy, leaned into the pull with his teeth still bared. His lips glistened wet. "Not there. I have work tomorrow."

"Where then?" mumbled Bucky. He almost sounded drunk with it.

That was when Steve understood: He could say anything. He steered Bucky's head back a little, revealing the length of his throat. Bucky's adam apple bobbed as he swallowed. With the slightest pressure, Bucky slid down until he was hovering over Steve's waist, and there he waited for the next guidance. His eyes lifted to look up at Steve from under long eyelashes, and Steve thought he might die right then and there. Fuck the war. Fuck fighting. Fuck nobility. He wanted only one soldier to give commands to for the rest of his life.

He never had much of a chance to exercise his control after that. Bucky left, Steve was experimented on, Bucky was captured, Bucky was damaged, Bucky was changed. They both froze and melted and froze. And now Bucky is - he is -

"Yes," he says quietly. "You did very well for me. Thank you. You kept us both alive."

The change in Bucky is remarkable. If he had been a cat, he might have started purring. Perhaps it would have been subtle elsewhere, but not to Steve. Bucky's shoulders relax; his expression clears. He doesn't smile, but something about his posture is strikingly pleased. Steve wants to go on praising; he wants to shower adoration, coat him in his adoration, until Bucky is a puddle, melted, but he stops himself. Bucky says, "Now clean myself, sir?"

"Yes," says Steve. "That's right."

Bucky starts to walk past him and stops at Steve's side. He turns his head in Steve's direction. "Do you… need to be cleaned as well… sir?"

Steve's whole body locks up. He may be able to keep his breathing in tact, but his heart rate sprints out of his control. In his old body, he'd be having a seizure right now. The coyness in Bucky's voice - is he being coy? Or simply obtuse? Helpful? He's driving Steve insane - reminds him so much of the old days, before they were ever together. So many innuendos thrown in his direction, so many instances where Steve would have to excuse himself out of a conversation because he had an inappropriate hard-on. He nearly socked Bucky in the nose when he learned that Bucky had been teasing him for months. There were times when the suggestive tone in Bucky's voice hadn't been fun or lighthearted for Steve; it had tormented him. He was convinced he was pathetically reading into every situation, that there was no possible way someone as beautiful and strong and masculine could ever fancy him, Steve. Just Steve. Learning that it was purposeful had been the greatest shock of Steve's life. Purposeful now? Reading into it now?

"No," he says, his voice one tight line. "That's very good of you to ask, but I'll be alright. Bucky, ah, did… what did they say to you to make you like this?"

In Russian, Bucky repeats the phrasing, his voice guttural: " _Come for your handler."_ Then he says it again in English.

Steve reaches up to press hard at the point between his eyebrows. Super soldiers don't get headaches. Which mean the aching, throbbing beat in his head has to be attributed to something else. "Right," he says. "Okay. Shower. Then I'll give you the rest of the mission report later. In the bedroom."  _Fuck._ That sounds worse than he'd meant it to. Can't take it back now.

Bucky nods, turns his head once more almost as if he's scanning the room, then departs.

Steve is left alone with the bodies.

And a complex set of emotions in his chest.

He calls Natasha.

"How fast can you get here?" he asks.

"Fast," she says. "I'm on my way."

"Bring supplies. For a clean-up."

"Anything else?"

"Come alone."

Initially, he'd thought to bring in an entire team of Avengers to clean this mess up, but now he thinks the less the better. Until Bucky is in his right mind, he can't imagine bringing anyone near him - except for someone who has as close to shared experience as you can get to the Winter Soldier.

The Black Widow.

She comes like her word promised: Quickly. Bucky's still in the shower. Steve recalls that he used to take long showers in the before days as well, always using up the hot water before Steve could get to it. The solution was naturally to start sharing showers, which doesn't apply nearly as well in this situation.

Natasha takes one long look around the room before setting down her bucket filled with cleaning supplies.

"You could have maybe been a little more specific," she says.

"Big ears," he says. There's ears here too, but no way around it. They'd have to leave the building to get far enough from Bucky, and there's no way in hell Steve would leave with him in this state. "I have a bit of a bigger problem then this though."

Her eyebrows lift. "Bigger than five dead bodies on your living room floor?"

"It's messy, I know."

Natasha's gaze roams the room and then lands on the agent with the torn throat. "I think I recognize that handiwork."

"Do you? I thought he was always forced to be discreet." This really feels like the opposite of that to Steve. "Listen…" He comes towards her and suddenly it feels like too much. He's been taking care of other people for years, and the one person who always use to take care of him is in the shower cleaning blood of his hands and teeth. Steve's body doesn't betray the feelings shredding up his insides. His hands don't shake. He doesn't cry. But the way he stares at Natasha makes her expression suddenly go soft, and he knows she sees it. She pulls him down, her, this tiny woman with such strength at her core, and holds his head to her shoulder.

They stand like that for a moment, his shoulders hunched around her. He feels massive. His eyes squeeze as tightly shut as they can go.  _Blind like Bucky._ Red rises in starbursts behind his eyelids. He hadn't been held in such a long time. Maybe not since he woke in the the future. At long last he pulls away and she holds his face for a moment, looking hard into his eyes.

"Tell me," she says.

"Bucky thinks I'm his handler," he says in a low voice, nearly a whisper. Nearly mouthing the words. "He's back to square one. All his progress…"

"No," she says. She squeezes his face harder and then drops her hands. "Square one would be in Hydra's hands. Square one would be forgetting you entirely. As long as he's here, he's safe. And he's not as far as you think."

It feels very far. It feels like Bucky is in the cryofreeze again.

No. He's in the shower. He's warm. He's almost clean.

Steve inhales shakily. "I don't know how to break him of it. They came in here, they said some Russian phrases, what if it's another phrase to unlock him and I'll never guess it? Maybe… " he hesitates. "Do you want to see him? Maybe you would be better for him right now than I would."

"Steve, we both know you're the best person in the world to take care of Bucky Barnes, in any state of mind. He broke free of them once for you," she says, and her gaze is steely. "He'll do it a second time. And this time, he'll be healthy, surrounded by people who care for him. It's an entirely different scenario. I think the best thing to do in this case is let him sleep through the night and see if it's changed in the morning."

"That's it?" His voice is slightly hysterical. "You want the human version of 'Have you tried turning it off and back on again'?"

"Unless you prefer the alternative which is bringing him to Stark Tower and watching Bruce and Tony run labs on him."

The thought makes him feel even sicker. "I don't want to involve anyone else if I can."

"So then try this first. Call me tomorrow if there's no sign of change or if you wake up with a knife to your throat."

Steve scowls.

Her lips twitch. "Kidding. In the meantime, why don't you go shower? This will be gone out here by the time you're done. Don't worry about it."

"My shower's don't last nearly as long as Aquaman's back there."

"Trust me, Steve," says Natasha, and he does, he really does. "I've been doing faster clean-ups since I was fifteen. Just take a shower and get some rest. The 1930s called and they want the Great Depression back."

"After custodian, maybe considering a job as a comedian," he says.

The shower switches off down the hall. He wonders if it's because Bucky's been listening - if he thinks Steve wants it now. Nothing Bucky does can be construed as free will until it's asserted otherwise. He sighs. He misses the yogurt cup. Slowly, he walks down the hall with his blood-splattered clothes towards his soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ur comments are so good, i love them. i love everyone in this bar


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess how many times I wrote “Steve looks” in this chapter before backspacing

The Asset tries not to listen. As soon as he hears his handler speaking with the redhead woman, a gut instinct tells him to tune it out. Training himself not to hear is nearly impossible at this point however; his ears pick up sounds like a radio tower. He hears his handler try to give him away. He hears the phrase  _Thinks I'm his handler_ , as though he isn't really. He hears the wording  _Run labs on him_ and nearly punches through the tiles before he stops himself.

Because the handler doesn't want to involve anyone else.

Because the handler wants him all to himself.

He'd heard the shift in Steve's heartbeat pace when the Asset asked about cleaning him. That wasn't the sound of a disinterested man. He'd never been used sexually for his previous handlers; he was a weapon and a weapon alone. The upper management of Hydra saw him as a filthy piece of machinery with oil and blood. The lower management perhaps saw more worth in his body as a body, but didn't have the power to do anything about it without risking their own necks. If there was one thing everyone in Hydra worked towards in unison, it was self-preservation.

Except for the Soldier. He was the one alone they taught to self-destruct.

He cleans himself well for the new handler. It is his one order, and he takes to it viciously. The water is scalding hot, and he leans into it, bent over and scrubbing at his hair. The soap froths on his skin; he scrubs with little heed for how it feels as the water at his feet turns rusty brown. He takes the soap down his stomach, over his cock and balls, then behind through his ass cheeks.

None of the other handlers used him or he might be even less functional than he already is - thinking of it makes his limbs deaden, his entire body turning numb with violent distaste - but this handler. This handler, he thinks he will perform for if he is asked. This handler doesn't work in fear and pain, but rather something warmer, sweeter. When his eyes fall upon the Asset, the Asset forgets briefly the lessons he's been taught in the last sixty years and his mind is swept back further to a hazy time of… a time before killing. A time of… thin wrists. Blue veins beneath white skin. The Captain's gaze brings him back and back. To before. He can't see, but he can feel the weight of it. The want of it. He will perform for that. He will do anything at all.

He's been running his hand over the tight hole between his legs, distracted. The water and soap and friction meld together to make something more pleasant than he anticipated. His index finger catches against the rim, and curious, he pushes up, his calves tensing as he lifts himself in the same motion. To put it all the way inside, is this what the handler meant by cleaning himself? Cleaning all of himself?

The Asset closes his eyes and hums a little. Post-fighting haze, adrenaline dripping away to leave something weary and malleable behind.

He doesn't want the dissatisfaction of worrying his handler -  _Steve_  - again. That would lead to his voice growing tight, his scent growing sharper, which would lead to the Asset's stomach knotting in worry. There was no mention of this in the instructions. He thinks… he shouldn't. Not if Steve didn't explicitly say.

It's possible for him to go directly from the bathroom to Steve's room; there are two entrances, the other being from the hall, and he wraps himself carefully in a towel before entering. He hears Steve pausing outside the bathroom from the hall, waiting until the Asset shuts the door between the two rooms before he goes inside.

He takes his time drying himself as he listens to Steve in the shower. Wonders idly if Steve, the handler, has ever put anything inside of himself and did he surprise himself with the pleasure of it - then his mind shuts off, not allowing the thought to go further. Disrespectful. Wrong. He's not. He shouldn't. He towels all the water droplets off his legs and thighs and stomach, then uses it to wring out his hair. He wraps the towel around his waist once more and sits on the edge of the bed, growing colder and colder as the shower stays on.

Would it really be that bad to present himself? It might bring a frown to the handler's face - or it might not. It might bring the pounding heartbeat back. What he imagines is a watchful, intense look accompanying it. It makes the Asset feel powerfully seen. It brings heat back to his bones.

He doesn't think Steve will ever ask for it himself. He is too good for that. He is too kind.

But if the Asset offers? Will he resist?

If the Asset wants it too?

He wants?

He's not used to wanting. Obeying orders. Taking lives. Planning missions. The more he thinks about Steve's lingering gaze though, the more his cock begins to harden. He shifts on the bed. He thinks of Steve praising him for protecting him. He thinks of Steve praising him for other things --  _Good Bucky, good boy. Thank you._ He wants Steve to be proud of him, to take care of him, he wants Steve to run his large hands all over the Asset's body. His breath catches in his chest. His eyes stare blankly but his mind churns with sensations of touch and desire and something else. The faint idea that this has happened to him before. The wanting. 

And then Steve comes in.

"Oh," he says. "You're not dressed yet. I'll -"

"Steve," he says, and stands. The towel crumples to the floor. He's hard and naked and still slightly damp.

Steve's heartbeat skyrockets. He smells clean and crisp, intoxicating. He's wearing clothes; the Asset can hear the fabric running together, smell the cotton. "What are you doing? Please - I - please, Bucky. Get dressed."

The Asset takes a step towards the handler, cautiously. It's a test. Steve whimpers. The metal arm shifts and recalibrates, clicking into place. The Asset doesn't know what it's like to be with someone. Or maybe he does. Maybe he recalls pieces of it, strewn throughout the years like a puzzle. A flash of red hair. A man with brown eyes. Thin wrists. He inhales deeply. Thin wrists. Clean scent. Someone smaller than him but stronger than him in a strange juxtaposition. The handler. Control.

"Are you - back?" asks Steve. His voice is strangled. "It's you again, Bucky?"

"It's me," says the Asset. He's aware of his entire body in a way that he never has been before. The tip of his scalp tingles; his feet flex against the wooden floor. And his groin - his balls feel heavy and tight, his cock leaking at the tip. His hole clenches around nothing, and now he regrets not doing more in the shower. But his handler will take care of him. He always does. He walks across the room and then when he is close enough, sinks down to his knees. The action immediately feels right. He tilts his head back, blank eyes pointed up at the handler. "Please," he says.

Steve chokes. If the Asset leans in, will he feel a hardened cock against his face? He wets his lips. Then Steve suddenly stops, and the tension in him heightens. "Bucky… Cut your hair for me."

"With what?" asks the Asset immediately.

Steve sighs. He steps back from the Asset. "Get up," he says quietly. "Please. Put your clothes on."

The Asset hesitates. He knows he failed something, but he doesn't know how or why. All he knows is that Steve has somehow flipped from burning and driven to tired and resigned. He might have been standing in a library putting a used book back on the shelf rather than standing before a compliant, aroused Asset. Reluctantly, he obeys. When he's finally clothed in a simple set of black sweatpants and t-shirt, he stands before Steve again and waits for another order. He's lost some of his hardness in his confusion, in the quietness. Steve's heartbeat thuds with perfect rhythm.

The Asset swallows. He cocks his head.

"Sir?" he asks.

Steve makes a pained sound. "Bucky, I'm not going to do that with you. Not while… I can't. I can't touch you when you're not in your right mind."

"But -"

"I  _won't_ ," says Steve, his voice harder. The authority thrills the Asset. And frightens him. He straightens his spine and nods. Steve softens. "I don't want that. It… I honestly couldn't be less interested in someone who can't decide for themselves. I'm here to protect you and shelter you. I'll give you structure if you need it, but I will never do anything to compromise you."

The Asset's shoulders fold in, his body hunching. He knows in the firmness of Steve's voice that he's not being rejected, but he feels… not good enough. Bad. He feels bad.

Failure. The Asset has failed.

It detonates something inside of him. Should he have crawled? Should he have prostrated himself flat on the floor? Should he have bent in a way that suggested more for the handler, better, wetter, hotter, sex? He's breathing hard like he's just killed another five men, and his fingers on his right hand feel ice cold.

"Bucky," says Steve, and comes closer. He touches the Asset's hair gently, tentatively, like he's not allowed to. Then he slowly pulls the Asset in, wrapping his arms around him. The pressure reminds him first of restriction, the chair, body bondage - and then the smell envelops him and a whispered memory of a reedy boy lying on top of him flashes quickly through his mind.

Perhaps this is why he does it. The suggestion of a past, the promise of a history. Being more than the Asset, even if he isn't now and he doesn't know how to access that other part of him. A reedy boy lying on top of him. The smell of a good man who has always been kind to him. The Asset surges up and clumsily kisses Steve with all his might. Steve stiffens against him and tries to withdraw, but the Asset's fingers are entangled in his clothes, clutching, and their strength is evenly matched. It's a closed mouth kiss, lips to lips, and then the Asset parts his barely in a sigh, and Steve's follow with a groan. The groan ripples through the Asset from his nipples through his navel; he did that. He brought the handler such a reaction.

And then the kiss softens. It doesn't run through with urgency; the handler doesn't put his hands on the Asset's body like he was expecting. It is only this: Steve kisses him tenderly, one hand carding through the Asset's hair. It is a precious kiss. It says:  _I can't believe I'm allowed this._ Steve draws the Asset's lower lip into his mouth and sucks, bringing his teeth down lightly, it makes the Asset's knees weaken. He didn't know his knees could weaken. Instinctually he opens his eyes, wanting to see the expression on Steve's face - longing? Pained? Breakable? But there's only darkness. He closes his eyes again and Steve's tongue at last, at last, licks into his mouth, and his taste floods the Asset.

And then -

And then -

It rocks through him, the memory.

The first time he kissed a boy named Steve.

It's as if he's watching someone else do it. A dark-haired happy version of himself, whose smile is so sure and cocky until he looks in the mirror and then a river of insecurity trickles through. He comes home one day to a small, threadbare apartment, the one that's over the fish market and always reeks of guts. Steve is sitting at the scarred kitchen table, drawing. He looks up. The sun is in his hair. The circles under his eyes are a dark blue. He smiles at Bucky (at Barnes at the Asset at the Soldier he kisses his mouth like a lover like a familiar like someone who's lost something dear to them).

Bucky feels strung-out. He paces back and forth. The smile on Steve's face fades.

"What's eating you?" he asks.

Bucky could live his whole life without ever knowing if his feelings are returned. He  _thinks_ Steve might care for him, he  _hopes_ , but what if it's all imagined? All the quick glances out of Steve's peripheral towards him when he's changing, all the times his mood grows sour when Bucky mentions a bird, all the fights that have sprung up between them in the last year like they never have before. It's fights like he's seen between his parents, born of a tension and love that differs from fights between friends. They're not simply pals. Even if Steve is in denial, Bucky knows. He knows that there is a bond between them greater and brighter and stronger than anything else he'll ever have.

"Buck?" asks Steve, rising up. He's so much shorter than Bucky, barely half the width as well. But one glance from him makes Bucky weaker than a girl. His knees weaken.

They could have everything, if he dares to try.

Oh, but is the agony of not knowing worth the agony of losing Steve if he's wrong?

He doesn't know why today is the day, why it's different than any other day. All he knows is that if he doesn't do it right this moment, then he will lose the courage to approach Steve ever again. And God knows Steve will never do it, even if he's secretly yearning all the days of his life. He’d been walking home and he’d seen their neighbors, one of the oldest couples in the neighborhood. Bertie and Jim. Together for nearly sixty years. When she moved, Jim followed, his hand hovering behind her elbow, always ready to catch. Their conversations were never fully formed, half-sentences that only they could interpret. Should we? But what about? Do you remember? You’ll like this. The one with the. Yes, that one.

Bucky wanted that. He wanted it with his entire being. To not only have Steve for a moment, but to have him for a lifetime. To be so old and to have been with Steve for so long that he never had to finish a thought before Steve answered it. That’s why it’s today. So that in sixty years, he would have no regrets.

"Steve," says Bucky, his voice raw. "Don't hate me for this."

"Hate you for what?" asks Steve, and Bucky kisses him.

He's kissed a lot of girls at this point, and a few boys as well in the darkness of the night, in alleyways, in secret, but it feels like his first kiss all over again. He knows how inexperienced Steve is. He knows this is Steve's first kiss, and if it goes poorly, he'll hate himself for robbing Steve of a rightful first time. The selfish possessive part of Bucky Barnes is fiercely glad that if it ruins things for them, then at least he'll own this. This one tangible moment, held crystal in his memory.

A second passes. Steve is frozen.

Then he kisses Bucky back. The inexperience doesn't matter; Bucky feels his awkward fumbling, struggling to get it right, eagerly and desperately trying to pull Bucky in, gripping at his clothes, small but ferociously pulling Bucky down so that their noses mash together and their breathing is erratic and harsh into one another.

It is altogether a different kiss than hundreds of years later, an Asset and Steve Rogers in an expensive apartment in Manhattan.

The two kisses infringe like wet newspaper plastered together. The ink bleeds through, layered thickly, and it's the Asset kissing young Steve Rogers and post-serum Steve kissing Bucky Barnes and one is cautiously loving and one is earnestly passionate and one is crumbling into nothing. The Asset is gone. Barnes is kissing Steve. Tears leak out of his eyes. When Steve's hand cups his face and feels the wetness there, the kiss pauses - Steve breathes out slow, dazed, and then his breath catches.

"Bucky?" he asks. "Oh my God."

Barnes touches his mouth with trembling fingers. "I'm sorry," he says. He wants to throw up. "Steve, I -"

"Bucky, don't apologize. It's my fault. I'm so sorry. I'm so -" His voice is wretched. He reaches for Barnes, who recoils. Steve's arms drop.

Barnes is afraid of himself and afraid of the past and afraid of the dead men in the other room, but most of all he afraid by the shame in Steve's voice, and the despair.

Turning, he flees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i eat your tears, they give me strength. your comments make me powerful.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> florence is right, we all have a hunger
> 
> alternate listening: go to town by doja cat

Steve imagines a world in which Bucky was always blind, from day one. From the beginning.

Ironically, it would have been enough to save him from all of this. A blind man certainly wouldn't have been allowed in the war, even one as charming as Bucky - not that Bucky would have tried, since he'd been drafted. Perhaps Erskine would have taken him as the serum patient zero instead. Or maybe it would have been a world in which neither one of them went to war. Maybe Steve wouldn't have wanted it so desperately if Bucky hadn't gone. His sense of justice would have been sated a little, staying at home and being Bucky's eyes. A life of peace, for them, at last.

Would Bucky still have chosen him, blind?

He has to think so. Hell, it probably would have brought them together sooner. Or would it have?

"You really…" he said one day as they lay in bed together, covered in sweat. The windows were all open which meant they had to be careful of sound drifting. He gestured a hand down his body: Thin abdomen, ribs pushing through, the wrong curve of his spine, all the hidden pains underneath, the weak lungs, the eczema. His eyebrows lifted not with curiosity but with confusion. He kept waiting for Bucky to blink and take a long look at him and say,  _Oh that's right. I've only now realized you're hideous._

"Steve," said Bucky, exasperated and fond.

Steve frowned and looked away. "You never answer me."

"You'll never see what I see, so why bother? Can't you simply accept that you are what I want for now and always?"

He couldn't. He couldn't simply accept it. As soon as he did, that's when the rug would be pulled out from underneath him. As soon as he embraced it, he would see the cruel joke.

"It's your strength, Steve," said Bucky. His eyes were full and serious when Steve glanced over; his expression had a little bit of yearning in it. "You're always fighting for others. Even when you rightfully deserve to give up because of how hard it is, when everyone else would call it quits, you push through. You're little, but you're scrappy." His eyes fell to Steve's lips, and he unconsciously licked his own. "You're hot as hell."

"Do you have a hard-on for justice?"

Bucky smirked. "Yes. Justice. Truth. If I could fuck America and her virtues, I would."

"I honestly hate you, Bucky Barnes."

"Come here," said Bucky with a hungry expression and pulled Steve on top of him. He liked hauling Steve around, sitting him on his lap, gripping his waist in his big hands so that his fingers splayed across Steve's back. Any time Steve worried that Bucky only liked him because he was pretending he was a girl Bucky spent a good thirty minutes going down on him, simply worshipping his cock with needy little moans, and the fear dispelled. No one who sucked cock as good as Buck could possibly be wanting a girl.

After the serum, he planted himself naked in front of Bucky and waited for his reaction. He wanted him panting, dripping, begging to touch him immediately - instead Bucky looked almost bored as his gaze trailed Steve from top to bottom. He was slouched in a hard-back chair, his legs spread wide, his uniform mussed. There wasn't even a hint of a bulge in his trousers.

"Do you want me?" Steve asked. It was ridiculous. He was 6'2", he was rippling muscle and glistening skin. Everyone wanted him. Girls flocked to him. Peggy Carter gave him a second glance, her eyes lingering, he could still feel her palm flat against his stomach. But now here was Bucky looking like he'd been offered day-old canned tuna. He was as insecure here as he'd been before. It was pathetic. Every moment with Bucky, do you like this? What about this? Do you want me more then you used to or less? He had a terrible feeling that he'd done something wrong.

"Come here," said Bucky.

When Steve stepped between his legs, Bucky slid a hand up his side. He touched the smoothness of Steve's chest, hairless, and felt the contours of his abdomen. When he next looked up, a smoldering fire had ignited in his eyes.

"I'm all yours," said Steve.

"You were all mine before," said Bucky. "There's something in you that belongs to the U.S. government now."

The words struck Steve hard; he flinched. His erection, which sprung as easily as a boy going through puberty, flagged. He didn't know then what he knew now, that Bucky was already undergoing the Winter Soldier treatment, that he had nightmares of his torture every night. It was naive and foolish of him to think that a new body would be everything Bucky could want when what Bucky really wanted was to be back in the past with Steve's frail spine curving against him, the horrors of war dispelled. When they made love that night it was in the dark without any lights on. Bucky was fiercer than before, kissing him harder, knowing that Steve wasn't breakable, biting at his chest, and God, Steve loved every second. Bucky rode him from behind without holding back. He realized then how slow they'd gone before, how careful Bucky had been with him without appearing careful. He'd always thought their sex had been rough. He'd learned the truth then, with Bucky's fingers pressing bruises into his hips which healed as soon as his hands shifted.

Bucky flipped him over, pushing back into him with one hard thrust. He swallowed Steve's gasps with his mouth. His arms made walls on either side of Steve's head.

"I'm yours," said Steve again, breathlessly. "I'm only yours. You can have me whatever way you want." In the dark, he could see Bucky as good as ever. It was clear the way Bucky's face crumpled up at that, his mouth so twisted and lost, but his hips didn't lose their rhythm, didn't stutter. If Steve couldn't see in the dark, he wouldn't have known at all the effect he had on Bucky.

Had Bucky been born blind, they never would have gone to war, they never would have lost each other.

Life would have had its own difficulties. The domestic difficulties of two men trying to love each other in the 1930s. It wouldn't have been without hardship. But they would have been together…

A blind Bucky Barnes would have learned the contours of his body in an entirely different way. When they first met, he wouldn't have seen the same spindly little boy everyone else saw. Maybe he would have heard the wheeze in Steve's voice and known who he was dealing with. They would have bonded over being different, over their disabilities.

Deep down though, Steve knows he wasn't an outsider because of his health. It was who he was inside that kept him on the fringes: Prickly, stubborn, determined, a little self-righteous. Buck, charismatic and a smooth-talker, Buck would have succeeded with eyesight or not. Their bodies didn't define them. He'd learned that through the serum. He'd learned the healthy body or not, he was still incredibly in love with James Buchanan Barnes. It was who he was. It was his soul.

Bucky's been avoiding him for days. Steve doesn't know what to do. He thought maybe he should let Bucky have his space - then he thought he should let Bucky know how sorry he is again for kissing him. Allowing himself to be kissed? He doesn't know. He's so afraid he'll do something wrong and Bucky will run away, like a startled animal. Or he'll turn back into the Asset.

He wishes he could shrink back down. Of all the things he could do or make, he thinks if he managed to be his small frail self again that it would bring Bucky back to him. He imagines Bucky's little gasp as he touches Steve's bony shoulders, the bumps of his spine. Steve shudders. He wants to be handled again by Bucky. It's all he wants.

Instead of making model furniture this time, he makes clay statues. He makes busts of Bucky's mother, of his sister, pressing the likeness of their faces into the white-gray material. It takes him hours to do. He molds them with careful precision and then places them outside of Bucky's room without a word.

He makes one of himself too, of himself as he was years ago. His jaw is thinner, his nose appearing larger against the shrunken caves of his cheeks. His eyes are huge and delicate. He touches his own ears in present day and then makes the same version of them out of clay; that part of him at least stayed the same. It feels like he's almost making a stranger. This is what blind Bucky would have felt as a teenager had they met then. He would have run his hands over Steve's face like Steve is doing now, touching each crevice.

He places this one outside of Bucky's door and waits.

An hour later when he checks back, it's gone. The ones of Bucky's family are still as they were on the ground. He's thankful Bucky didn't simply smash them to pieces. They haven't had a chance to harden. His sister Rebecca looks even younger than he remembers; he didn't mean to make her looks so innocent. She often had the same mischievous look in her eyes that Bucky did.

He stands outside the door, waiting. Should he keep going with it? Make busts of Dum Dum and Morita and Gabe? His fingers itch, sticky. He shouldn't have let Bucky kiss him in that state of mind. It might have been the wrongest thing he's ever done. He wants to make a bust of Bucky's mouth. He wants clay to capture Bucky's face poised to kiss him for the rest of time. Desiring. He wants to carve it into marble where it'll always be.

He goes back into his room and lays on his bed with his hands folded on his stomach. He stares at the ceiling. Their old ceiling had water stains bleeding through from the bedroom above, parchment yellow. It had ridges from the uneven plaster improperly layered. This ceiling is too perfect. His eyes blur out.

He doesn't know how long he stays on the bed like that before there's a knock on the door - he's on his feet in an instant, crossing to open the door. Bucky has his hands at his sides, and his fingertips are dusted white.

"I didn't know you worked in clay," he says quietly.

"It's new," he says. "This century. We couldn't afford clay materials back then, though I think you tried to steal it for me one time. I used to want it so badly and now I could build the entire Stark tower in it if I wanted."

Bucky turns his face to the side. His eyelids lower. "I think I belonged to you even then if I was willing to do that. I was your Soldier."

"Buck, no," says Steve desperately. "You don't belong to anyone. You're your own man. I would never - I didn't -" He takes a step towards Bucky and then stops as soon as Bucky inches back. He swallows hard.

"Tell me the truth," says Bucky.

"Always," he swears.

"Was that the first time that's happened?"

Steve shifts. "You mean, since we woke up, or…"

Bucky's head turns towards him again. "Who were we?" he demands. "Why have you lied to me?"

"I didn't lie! I - I didn't think you were ready -"

Bucky walks away. He does it so fast and silently that Steve can only gape at the empty doorway for a moment before he follows, slinking. He's never felt so low before. It's a kick in the stomach.  _Why have you lied to me?_ Had he lied to Bucky?

Bucky's in the living room, his hands in his hair. He grits his teeth and then swivels back to Steve. His skin is pale. His mouth looks like a red gash. He tugs at his collar like he always did to loosen his button-downs, though this one is a loose t-shirt and hangs where he pulls it. "Something… like that… I thought I would have remembered it. How could they have taken something so large from me? It's like… stepping into a room to turn on a lamp, but it's never where you think it will be. And then when you find it, you realize the room is actually a cavern and you've only lit up a tiny square of it."

Steve doesn't know what to say. He's never heard Bucky try and articulate it before.

"I wasn't purposely hiding it," he says. "I'll answer any question you ask me, I promise. I... I didn't want you to think I was expecting the same things from before. I'm happy with whatever we have. It doesn't to be that."

He doesn't know how to say that he was so shocked and humbled that it happened the first time that he never anticipated it happening a second time.

Bucky rubs a thumb against his jaw, frowning. His white eyes gaze far off. "It is that," he says.

"It is what?"

Bucky huffs. "I feel it. I didn't know what it was or why. But even when I'm other, it's there. Even when I'm machine, the machine wants you."

Steve goes still. He doesn't dare move. "I thought you said you couldn't remember anything?"

"It's more than memory, Steve."

His heart thrills in his chest. It races like a horse. Bucky's head tilts forward listening to it and then the smallest smile graces his lips. That only makes Steve's heart sprint harder. The smile grows then abruptly drops and Steve freezes again.

"I hated being machine again," he says. His metal arm ripples and recalibrates, clicking together. "The fact that they could get to me so easily. What if I hadn't gone towards you? What if I'd gone against you?"

"We wouldn't have hurt each other," says Steve.

"We've done it before."

"We stopped ourselves before it went too far."

Bucky's mouth presses thinner and thinner. He used to look this way when Steve would choose buying food for widowed Mrs. Brady upstairs over his medicine. He used to share this same displeased look when he walked in the apartment to find Steve sitting with a bloodied nose and using a dirty handkerchief. Even with his empty eyes, it looks the exact same. "That's not good enough. I can't - I  _won't_  live here if the risk is that high. I'll leave."

A hole rips through Steve. He doesn't know how he managed to go from ecstasy to despair in such a quick amount of time. "It's a risk I'm willing to take," he manages.

Bucky shakes his head. "I'm not."

They stand in silence.

"If there was a way to break it," says Steve. "The training. We have to at least try. Let me ask Natasha, or Tony. Someone on the Avengers has to know a way to make it stop."

In a low voice, Bucky says, "Part of me still feels it even now. Like you're my…" He breathes out and then shakily laughs. The sound is so startling that Steve's eyes widen. "Let's just say don't make any inadvertent orders."

"I wouldn't," he says fervently.

Bucky smiles, but it looks more pained than anything else. "I think he really loved you."

Steve closes his eyes. He tries to think of something else so he won't cry. He thinks of the ceiling: White, smooth, clean. He tries to make himself into the ceiling. There's still water stains on him, no matter how much effort he puts into it. There's plaster on all the wrong parts of him.

"Actually," says Bucky, and then falls silent.

"What? What is it?"

Bucky walks to the couch, walks behind it, trails his fingers over the back of it. He seems to be thinking. Bucky always used to pace when he had a problem he needed to work over. The harder Steve attempts to keep from comparing the two Buckys the more similarities he sees. He touches his lips and feels the ghost. "Maybe if I did something he couldn't do. If you allowed me the chance to break the order. Reverse the procedure." When Steve doesn't respond right away, Bucky licks his lips. His mouth shines red. "If you let me manage you. It might help my mind cement the change. That I'm not… the Asset."

"Yes," says Steve immediately. "I'll do it."

Bucky blinks. "That easily?"

His voice is firm. "Tell me to do anything, Bucky."

Bucky's expression glazes a little. At first he thinks it's because he accidentally gave an order - he's about to retract it, but then Bucky speaks and his voice is husky and Steve realizes his expression is  _hunger._ "I wish you would wear the uniform."

A thousand years ago:  _You're keeping the outfit, right?_

"I could if you want me to," he says. His fingers tremble at the thought, more nervous than when he actually goes into battle. He knows how to fight aliens and monsters - this feels dangerous in a completely different way. One misstep to send Bucky scurrying. To fracture the bridge between them.

"Too difficult to take off."

Steve accidentally lets out a tiny whimper.

"Steve -" Bucky's expression is suddenly somber. "Don't let me do anything you don't want to do."

"The word is Marlboro if I want it to end."

Bucky cracks another smile - still a half smile, still nothing like his old self but good, so good - and then he nods. "Come here."

A low groan leaves Steve. He approaches without hesitation, without trepidation. He's now had Bucky asking for him in all walks of life. He'll come. He always will. Bucky reaches for him with his metal hand and strokes his face from his ear to his chin. The chill of the metal makes Steve shiver, but even more than that, the intent look on Bucky's face. Like he's really concentrating to feel Steve's skin through the wires. Steve leans on his toes, waiting to be pulled in for a kiss, but Bucky merely places his metal palm against Steve's cheek. He runs his thumb lightly under his eye. The same hand that nearly crushed him. It touches him tenderly.

"Get undressed," says Bucky quietly.

It's the way he says it that really runs through Steve. Like he's been waiting to say it for years. It feels like their first time together. Steve wants to protest that it's going too fast, but the whole point of this is that it's Bucky's decision-making pushing against the handler effect. He bites his tongue and pulls off his t-shirt, unsnaps his pants and pushes them down. Hesitates with his hands on his white undershorts.

Before he can react, he's being shoved against a wall face-first and Bucky's pressed up against his back, one hand holding him into the wall and the other hand toying at the waistband of his shorts. Bucky's mouth is against his ear. His breath hot on Steve's skin makes him choke. He's so close to having that mouth on him again. He writhes but Bucky's flesh hand holds him unyielding.

"This isn't going to work if you question it, Rogers," murmurs Bucky.

"Oh my god," says Steve. His head is sideways, cheek on the wall, and he's already panting. He's achingly hard. About to come in his shorts from having Bucky so close and so demanding.

"You questioning my authority?" asks Bucky. His metal hand slips barely under his shorts and then out again. "You know who's the boss of you?"

"It's you," says Steve. "You're the boss of me. Tell me what to do. Please."

Bucky hums low in his throat. "I rather like you like this. Can you squirm for me, pretty?"

Steve does his best at it, still held up by Bucky's arm. He doesn't know what to do with such controlled strength used against him. He hasn't felt matched in strength in so long - and when he did, it was in danger for his life. To feel it now, careful, precise, like Bucky was when he was small - he's leaking precome. The front of his shorts is wet against the wall.

"Tell me the bad things you've done," orders Bucky.

 _I let them take you._ But somehow Steve doesn't think Bucky's asking for that. He racks his brain, and the only thing he can think to say is, "I came without you. I - I touched myself thinking about you, when I thought you were gone."

Bucky makes a little noise. "Oh, Steve," he says. For a moment he breaks character, leaning in to nuzzle the back of Steve's neck. It's almost more of an embrace from behind now than pressing Steve into the wall. He noses up into Steve's hair. He sniffs at him. Then he straightens, and his stance hardens again. "I really don't think you were supposed to be touching yourself," he says. "I don't like the idea of you coming alone. Not at all."

"I was thinking of you," Steve says.

"Are you arguing?" says Bucky, his voice steel. Steve shakes his head frantically. "That's right, don't speak. You can think of me and not come, can't you? Or are you so desperate you have to come at the mere idea of me?"

Steve presses his lips together and arches his back, trying to keep silent.

"I really think you deserve a punishment," says Bucky. "You need a reminder for what to do the next time I'm away. Not that I'll be leaving any time soon, since apparently you're so needy for it. Someone has to keep you in check." He sighs. "That's my job."

Steve leans his forehead against the wall, overwhelmed. The words and the touching, the pressure of Bucky against his back. A few days ago and he thought he'd lost Bucky forever, all over again. It's always this, losing and finding each other and losing each other. He feels found now. He feels as though he's been trying to hold it together for Bucky for months and now at last Bucky is taking control and it's good for both of them and it's a  _gift._

"There now," says Bucky, stroking Steve's side lightly. "It's not that scary. Are you scared?"

Steve shakes his head.

"Are you sorry?"

He nods.

"Are you going to take your punishment like a good boy?"

He nods again.

"Plant your hands."

Steve does so, the muscles in his shoulders coiling as he splays his hands against the wall and straightens his stance.

"And time for these to come off." Bucky tucks one finger around the white shorts and pulls, letting Steve shimmy his hips the rest of the way for them to come off. He kicks them to the side, and now Steve is bare and Bucky is still fully clothed. It makes Steve's cock pulse with precome. He barely knows what Bucky is going to do before his hand comes down hard on Steve's ass, making him jump. It's with his flesh hand - softer than the metal hand, but still strong enough to make Steve tense before the next one lands right on top of the last one. His hand falls so many times in a row that Steve loses count - they never did this before, but he remembers Bucky teasingly threatening it once or twice, reaching for Steve and telling him he was going to put him over his knee. It would have humiliated Steve then but now he leans into, head hanging down and panting.

Bucky pauses and rubs his hand over Steve's ass, gripping a cheek. "Getting hot from it," he says. "Are you red?"

Steve has to breath a second to compose himself and then he peers over his shoulder down his back. It's disappointingly already pale again. "Harder, please," he says.

"Hmm," says Bucky. He leans in to bite at Steve's shoulder then he kisses the back of his neck, then down a little. Steve can't think. "You really jerked to me?"

"Only you," he confesses. It's a little embarrassing, but the next kiss seems pleased.

"Let's get you red," Bucky says against his skin. "Even if I can't see it, I remember that flush being my favorite thing. When you glowed like a sunset. When you outmatched the furnace. God, you're beautiful."

He wonders at the fact that Bucky's using his flesh hand to do the hitting if his aim is for impact, but it seems purposeful. The way Bucky used his metal hand to stroke his face with such gentleness is a direct opposition to him using his flesh hand for spanking. It's almost as if he's trying to merge the two, the right hand and the left hand. To bring balance to the way the two have been treated until it's all one person doing it. Bucky Barnes. Violence and love. Pain and pleasure. Metal and skin.

"Ah, ah, ah," says Steve as the spanking grows white-hot for an instance. He tilts his head back and lets his mouth fall open. " _Bucky._ " His hands scramble against the wall, nothing to hold onto.

Bucky stops again, and this time he's breathing hard too. "Yeah? You learned your lesson yet, Rogers? Huh, Stevie? Gonna come without me?"

"No," he gasps. "I won't. Please. Please let me touch you. I'll never come again if you tell me to."

Bucky presses into him once more full body and the feel of his erection against Steve's stinging ass makes him jerk into the wall, humping for friction. Bucky holds him down, grinding into him fully clothed. Steve wants him inside so badly. The first time they ever tried anything together, Bucky's brows knit in concentration as he slid a vaseline-covered finger into Steve. He'd been staring down at his finger pushing in and then his eyes caught Steve's expression - and he stared back, pupils blown wide. He couldn't take his eyes off Steve's face then. He's rocking into Steve now, hands on his waist and face buried in Steve's hair. They're so close it's like they're one body shifting together. He grits his teeth.

Then he backs away, and Steve twists to follow. His eyes are wild, face flushed, blond hair mussed. "Get down," says Bucky. The commands sound more natural coming out of Bucky's mouth now, like he has to strain for it less. Steve settles on his knees before him, faced upturned. "Take me out."

He reaches for Bucky's pants and unsnaps them, pulling them open down as far as Bucky's spread thighs will allow him. He can smell him and it makes Steve heady. He leans in to press his face into Bucky's wet boxers, but a hand catches his hair right before he can reach. He strains forward, whimpering.

"Beg for it," says Bucky.

"Please," says Steve. "Let me suck you. Oh please, Bucky, that's all I want. Just let me put my mouth on it. I'll be so good at it, I'll make it good for you. I'll get it so wet and slippery you can just stick it right inside of me -" The hand in his hair guides him forward and the gratitude bursts in his chest. "Thank you, thank you, Buck -"

Then he gets Bucky's shorts down and he doesn't have the patience to drag it out, he takes the head into his mouth right away. The sharp inhale above his head makes it worth it, plus the tightening of the hand in his hair. He doesn't know which hand it is. It doesn't matter. Any part of Bucky is enough for him. He sits up and takes as much of Bucky in his mouth as he can, breathing through his nose as he gets Bucky's cock down his throat. He feels wild with it.

The sounds Bucky are making are incredible. Steve opens his eyes and peers up at him half-lidded and hazy and  _fuck,_ Bucky's staring right back at him. No. He's blind. But his gaze is as fixed and dark as if he can see anyway the image that Steve makes before him. Steve feels naked and seen. Bucky slowly guides him down off his cock until his mouth is just barely on the tip. He slides his tongue into the slit and then swirls around the head the way he remembers Bucky liking when they first started. Bucky hisses through his teeth and digs his fingers into Steve's hair.

"Fuck," he growls. "Yes, fuck, Steve, you are so good. That's perfect, baby. Yes, sweetheart."

He slides Steve back down his cock and Steve moans at the epithets.  _Yes,_ he thinks, delirious.  _I'm your sweetheart. I'm your honey._ It used to drive him crazy hearing Bucky call the girls all the names Steve wanted to be called. Now it's the future and Bucky's cock is in his mouth and he's Bucky's sweetheart. He's going to make Bucky come.

He sucks. He hollows out his cheeks and then brings his head down to the tip again and then slowly back up. Bucky's lost control of the pace, and when Steve bobs his head and starts moving faster, Bucky's thighs quiver around him.

"Steve," he says. "My Stevie."

Steve can't help it. The tiniest tear leaks out of the corner of his eye. He pulls off and licks at Bucky's cock, stroking down with his hand as his drool drips off it. He kisses the inside of Bucky's thigh once, then again, steadily stroking all the while. Bucky's lips are moving but no sound is coming out. He sucks at a spot low on Bucky's stomach near his hip that he remembers Bucky going wild for - his teeth scrape over the sensitive area and then his tongue laves over the mark again and again, desperate.

"Steve," chokes out Bucky. He sounds undone. "Touch yourself."

He reaches down to touch his cock but Bucky's hand in hair tightens with warning.

"No," he says. "Inside."

Steve moans. He takes his spit-wet fingers and shifts up, pausing his ministrations on Bucky's dick as he focuses on himself. His thighs burn with the brunt of his weight, arching up as he slides one finger into himself.

Bucky lazily takes up the pace, his expression adrift like he's barely there. "I wish I could see the way you look. How many fingers?"

"Just one," says Steve. Bucky grunts. "But I can - hold on, I'll -" He bites his lower lip and slowly slides a second finger in beside the first. It's been a while since he's done this. It feels so full. He can't imagine if this was Bucky right now. Stretching him open, pressing into him. Steve groans low at the thought and Bucky twitches at the sound. "Two now. How many did you want me to take?"

"Can you reach far enough in?"

"I - yeah." He's breathless. His voice is high as he angles his hand in. And.  _There_. He leans his head against Bucky's thigh and brings his fingers in and out. "It's there. Oh, fuck, it feels so good."

"I love how you sound," says Bucky. "I remember… a glimpse. Of your face. It's in shadows. But I remember."

He wraps one arm around Bucky's thigh, holding him close, and then dips his mouth just below his cock.

"Fuck my mouth," he rasps. "Please, Buck."

Bucky's hips stutter forward and as soon as his dick touches Steve's tongue, he breathes out hard. He grips Steve's head with both hands and leans forward over him, pushing into his mouth. Steve's arm around his thighs, hugging him closer, his eyes closed as he opens his mouth and throat. His jaw aches and he's rutting into his own hand, impaled on either end. He loves it. He loves Bucky.

In and out, faster than Steve could have managed on his own, and then Bucky says, "Shit, shit, god  _damn_ I'm coming, Stevie, I'm coming," and Steve presses in so that his nose is right to Bucky's waist and he can feel when the spurts of come begin to hit the back of his throat. He moans like a whore, he's such a whore for Bucky, he wants this so badly. He's never wanted anything more. He clenches down on his fingers right over his prostrate and the sensation is all-body tightening, a starburst behind his eyes, heat running down his stomach and settling in his balls. He comes as Bucky's softening cock slips out of his mouth and he doesn't recognize the sounds out of his own mouth: incoherent, needy, begging. His hips jerk down into his hand, his cock untouched as his come streaks across Bucky's calves.

For a moment there's only the sound of their breathing, out of sync. Then Bucky touches his hair, softly. He runs his fingers through the damp strands. It's sweet and so very light. A cautiously loving touch. Bucky murmurs, "I could do that all day with you."

Steve huffs out a laugh. He feels light-headed. Hard to do when you're a supersoldier. He presses his cheek to Bucky's hip and looks up at him through his lashes, shy and delicate. "Should I go get the uniform now?" he asks.

Bucky's only response is to pull him up and kiss him.

At last. What Steve's been waiting for.

It's slow. Unhurried. It builds a well of emotion behind his chest. It teaches him how to be, how to exist. It teaches him the beginning and the end. He keeps his hand on Bucky's neck, his thumb slowly sliding behind Bucky's ear, and moves his lips with such impossible carefulness. The aftershocks of his orgasm make him feel loose and calm, his head as empty as it's ever been. He wants Bucky slow kissing him for hours. He wants Bucky to kiss all over his body.

Bucky isn't healed - not yet. But soon. Maybe. Maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 comment = 1 spanking on captain america's perky lil behind


End file.
